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How Facebook pages exploit Russia’s war in Ukraine with false videos [1]
['Tom Kertscher', 'Tom Kertscher Is A Contributing Writer For Politifact. Previously', 'He Was A Fact-Checker For Politifact Wisconsin.']
Date: 2022-07-29 09:55:00+00:00
Twin Facebook pages advertise themselves as providing newsy and up-to-the-minute coverage of Russia’s war in Ukraine. But on a given day, their followers might see videos claiming Norwegians raided Russian ships, Vladimir Putin was defeated on “all fronts,” or that a single British ship blocked a Russian fleet.
None of those headlines are true. But that doesn’t stop the pages Fios Vinks and Fiosl Liesi from earning clicks, views and a monetizable following through false reporting on the war.
The behavior of these obscure pages with their difficult-to-decipher names offers a case study of organized misinformation in one of its cheapest forms. Combined, these pages distribute dozens of videos a day — many plucked from YouTube and paired with sensational headlines — that aim to funnel viewers into larger Facebook groups that could be sold to buyers seeking large social media audiences. The pages appear to be part of a larger network and managed by a single, anonymous account. Their campaigns spread fast, outpacing fact-checks and creating confusion.
“It’s a parasitic network that’s trying to monetize the invasion of another country,” said Emerson Brooking, a resident senior fellow at the Digital Forensic Research Lab of the Atlantic Council.
After fact-checking videos from both pages multiple times, PolitiFact wanted to learn more about the origins of the pages, their prolific posting patterns, and what their endgames might be.
PolitiFact reached out to both Facebook pages and did not receive a response.
Strategies of wartime misinformation
Fios Vinks and Fiosl Liesi were created two days apart in late March 2022, almost a month after the Russian invasion of Ukraine began. The accounts share several videos a day, each posting around 50 videos per week.
There is no original content. Instead, the pages lift videos from several YouTube channels — never linking to the original videos.
Copying content from other platforms “is a big way that coordinated disinformation campaigns are able to produce a lot of content without having to produce it themselves,” said Jo Lukito, assistant professor at the University of Texas at Austin’s School of Journalism and Media.
The format of their video posts is nearly always the same: a clickbait caption (“Putin is Crying!” or “BIG EXPLOSION“), a thumbnail with relevant photos (Putin, fiery backdrops, weaponry), and large, urgent text proclaiming “Breaking News.”
Viewers are shown eight to 12 minutes of often unrelated footage through monotone, robotic narration. The clicks come anyway; Fios Vinks’ highest-viewed video in one week garnered 227,000 views. Fiosl Liesi’s June 23 post video titled “GIANT EXPLOSION IN RUSSIA! PUTIN Panicked!” has more than 1.2 million — even though there was no missile attack on a Russian gas station, as described in the video.
Sometimes, the headlines are loaded with specifics that give off a whiff of credibility. Without knowledge of artillery and eastern Ukraine, it would be hard to verify a recent headline that claimed the Ukraine army intercepted a “TOS-1A rocket launcher” and “destroyed Russia T-72B tank near Derhachi.”
The videos also manufacture a sense of urgency. Videos on both pages claim to cover events that happened 10, 15 and “20 minutes ago!” Identical videos posted several days apart repeatedly claim the same event just happened.
Other videos miscaption historic events. A video of a 2018 mall fire was used to claim that Moscow was a “sea of fire” after a missile attack, which we rated Pants on Fire. Another took a 2020 incident when Russian bombers approached Alaskan airspace and claimed it happened “12 minutes ago!”
“That sort of imminency does make people click,” said Brooking of the Atlantic Council. “There aren’t that many situations in which you can repeatedly get away with it, but you certainly can in the context of war.”
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https://www.poynter.org/fact-checking/2022/how-facebook-pages-exploit-russias-war-in-ukraine-with-false-videos/
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